


The Woods, Lovely Dark and Deep

by snowshus



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-19
Updated: 2017-05-19
Packaged: 2018-10-31 14:17:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10901082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snowshus/pseuds/snowshus
Summary: At night in the woods is no place for men, at least not men like Patrice who know nothing about survival, who know nothing about what really lurks out there, only stories well removed from reality.But Brad is out there.





	The Woods, Lovely Dark and Deep

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Las](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Las/gifts).



> Thank you to my wonderful betas who helped me makes this a real story and put up with my atrocious spelling and grammar. You are wonderful, thank you.

The lockout is pretty much an inevitability by the time negotiations reopen and Brad is not surprised when December rolls around and he is still in Halifax. Patrice calls him intermittently from the union meetings, his voice always a little more tight and little shorter as the talks drag on with no end in sight. He hates when Patrice sounds like that. If Brad could he’d make sure that the only voice Patrice ever used was the soft slow one, the one that means he’s got nothing on his mind. The best he can do right now is try and convince him to take a break. 

“Come visit me,” Brad always ends the calls. “They can have a few meetings without you, it’s not like anything will happen while you’re gone.”

Patrice always sighs and says, “I can’t yet, we’re almost there.”

Christmas comes and talks don’t resolve.

Sid comes back to the island for the holiday and when the new year starts he’s still at the rink in Halifax playing one-on-one with Brad.

Patrice calls, his voice even more clipped likes he knows Sid is sitting next to Brad and Brad is doing nothing to encourage him back to New York, or more like he knows even if he asked Brad would do nothing to encourage Sid back to New York. If the owners don’t want to play ball with Sid, Brad is more than happy to. He knows Sid will have to go back eventually. He just thinks they all deserve a break. If Sid wants to stew in Halifax, playing shinny with Brad until he’s ready to face the lawyers again, Brad isn’t going to tell him no. He just wishes Patrice would join them.

“Come visit,” Brad asks again. “It’s not like anything will happen without Sid.”

“He’s not actually our spokesperson, you know.” Patrice’s almost sounds amused for once.

“That wasn’t a no,” Brad pushes.

Patrice doesn’t say anything for a long moment. “Just for a little bit.”

“Sure, however long you want.” Brad grins at the phone.

\--

It’s late when Patrice gets into Halifax, nearing one in the morning. Patrice has been to Brad’s before, he knows the way well enough to direct a taxi on his own, but Brad comes to get him anyways. He fills the silence of the car ride back, always happy enough to talk for both of them, bouncing around from topic to topic filling Patrice in on all the local gossip, how he thinks his neighbor might be selkie or maybe just really into sailing, either way they’ve tattooed pigs on all three of the kids’ feet. Patrice doesn’t really have an opinion one way or the other, doesn’t really care about the neighbors kids, but he likes to listen to Brad talk. 

Once they’re home Patrice follows Brad up to the guest bedroom. Brad hands him a set of towels and with a sincerity Patrice is rarely lucky enough to see says, “I’m really glad you came.”

“Me too,” Patrice smiles back, and lets himself wish for a moment he was going to be sharing the bed with Brad, that this was Brad’s room, their room. He’s imagined it enough times for the picture to be well worn. They’d live in Halifax, of course, because Patrice isn’t particularly attached to anywhere and Brad has always loved coming home.

That’s not how things are though. There was a time, a few years ago, when Patrice had thought they were maybe heading towards something, but he was wrong. He lets the moment pass.

Brad pushes off the door, steps back into the hallway, “We’ll skate tomorrow, make sure you still remember how.” 

Patrice nods and closes the door between them. 

He lays down in the bed and lets his mind drift, lets it linger on that moment by the door, lets it linger on all the other moments over the years, all the maybes and almosts. He lets the yearning grow, imagines for a moment climbing into Brad’s bed, feels the first tug of desperation and repeats the words his father taught him the first time he’d used a night wish, barely six years old and so so homesick he’d have done anything to be back in his bed. Between one breath and then next he’d ended up back in his own room, tearing his mattress apart trying to burrow inside it, miles away from where he was supposed to be asleep in his grandmother’s guest room. The night wish is just like that, made from the darkest desperate parts of the heart. It can take people anywhere as long as they want it bad enough but they’re as likely to destroy what they seek as not.

 _I wish I was there,_ Patrice admits, _but not enough to use the night wish._

He breathes out, and in, and stays right where he is. 

They don’t have to worry about actually working out or improving their two on one so there's no reason to go to professional rink. Instead they go to the old pond Brad used to skate on in the winter. Sometimes there are kids around, but it’s usually pretty empty. They spend the day playing shinny and messing around. By the end of the day Patrice feels lighter then he has in months. This is it. This is what he’s wasting all that time in New York for. This is what he loves, skating and hockey and Brad. He’d almost forgotten, trapped in a bureaucratic hell of salary minutiae. This is what it was all for, this feeling. 

He doesn’t notice the sun going down. It isn’t until a passing car’s headlights illuminate the ice that he realizes how dark it’s gotten. 

Brad looks up at the same time, sliding to a stop. “Shit.”

“What’s wrong?” 

“Nothing,” Brad shakes himself and gives Patrice his nothing-to-see-here smile, as if Patrice wouldn’t see right through that. “I just, I didn’t realize how late it was, we should head back.”

Patrice wants to protest, like he’s a kid again begging his parents for just a little longer. Brad seems unnerved though, keeps glancing around like he’s looking for something.

They make it all the way back to the car before Brad realizes he left his stick on the ice. 

“I’ll be just be right back, just wait here ok?” Brad says. “Just, don’t go anywhere, ok? No matter what.”

“Sure,” Patrice nods slowly. 

“I’ll just be a second,” Brad says, disappearing down the little hill that leads to the edge of the ice. Patrice pulls out his phone and checks his email. He has an update from Fehr on how the talks are proceeding. More bad news. He’s got a note from his agent about a sponsorship thing. He tightens his coat when he hears the wind whispering through the trees. He opens up the attachment his agent sent and starts reading the details. 

The sunlight fades away around him. 

When Patrice looks up from his phone the stars are out and Brad is not back. He hesitates a moment, Brad had been so insistent that he stay with the car, that he not follow Brad back down to the frozen pond. He shakes it off, Brad had also said he’d be back in a few seconds and it’s been far, far longer than that. 

He follows their footprints in the shallow snow back down the path to the now empty pond. The stick Brad had left lies at the edge of the ice sunk into the snow but Brad is nowhere to be seen. 

“Brad!” Patrice calls out, but his voice is swallowed by the snow, it doesn’t echo or bounce through the trees or off the ice, it barely seems to carry to the tree line at all. 

“Brad,” he calls again and there is no answer, not even the wind responds. 

Patrice walks around the edge of the ice, searching for any sign of Brad, a scarf, a glove, anything that would show he’d been there. He circles around to the far end where the lights from the road barely reach. The snow has been pressed in there, and the brown grass underneath peaks through the white: a set of footprints heading towards the trees. Patrice hesitates, again. He’s never much liked the outdoors. There was park near his house that was nice, but real wilderness was hours away through miles and miles of farmland. 

Patrice has never been particularly drawn to the outdoors the way some people are, the way Brad was, always driving out to mountains around Boston for a day. Patrice rarely went with him, preferring to explore Boston, the twist and turns of the city and the weight of centuries of humanity pressed into the earth. He doesn’t really know what he’s walking into. The woods are full of dangerous things and night is when the wild holds the most power. At night in the woods is no place for men, at least not men like Patrice who know nothing about survival, who know nothing about what really lurks out there, only stories far removed from reality.

But Brad is out there.

Patrice follows the footprints down through the line of trees and into the forest. It’s quiet, nearly silent and Patrice wishes he knew if that was a good or bad thing. The tracks lead further and further away, twisting and turning around on each other. It doesn’t take long at all before the edge of the forest disappears and Patrice has no idea which way is back. He keeps his head down and follows the footprints, careful not to look away lest he get mixed up and end up following them back the way he came. 

The wind blows and the stars disappear as dark clouds reach across the sky. Patrice squints as the shadows become harder to distinguish but doesn’t look up. He doesn’t look up until the big white snowflakes begin drifting slowly down, filling in the tracks ahead and behind him. It takes less time than Patrice thought it would for the tracks to disappear completely. They fill up with new snow leaving Patrice stranded and alone, completely lost in the woods. 

He tries to call for Brad again but this time the wind drags his voice away. Fear starts to build in his chest, rising up through his throat. He’s lost. He’s lost in the middle of the woods in the middle of the night and the snow is getting worse and the wind is picking up and Brad is missing and he could be anywhere, he could be lost further in this fucking awful forest and Patrice just wants to know where he is, to know what happened. 

He closes his eyes against the sting of the wind and the rising panic and takes a deep breath. He let’s the desperation fill him up, lets it tear at his throat and devour his thoughts until all he can think about is Brad. The words rise up in his mind. _I wish I was there. I wish I was there._ He lets his breath out and when he opens his eyes he can see Brad in front of him. His skin is almost as white as the snow and his eyes are glossy and hazily staring at the woman in front of him. He takes slow unsteady steps towards her and she slides away, leaving no marks in the deepening snow. 

_She’s taking Brad away from him, his Brad, how dare she. How dare she. No one is allowed to have Brad except him. No one. No one._

Patrice is next to her in an instant. His hand is at her throat, pushing her away, away from his Brad. Away. Away. Her skin is colder than ice against his fingers, it numbs them instantly and travels up his arm. He can’t feel anything anymore but he keeps his grip, keeps fighting and pushing, knows nothing else, wants nothing else than to see her dead. Brad is his. His.

“Patrice?” he thinks he hears behind him.

He breathes in. The air freezes his lungs and he’s back where he started, lost and alone in the middle of the woods. 

“Patrice!” Brad’s voice breaks through the quiet that had once again filled the woods.

“Brad,” Patrice tries to call out, though his voice feels brittle and tight. 

They call back and forth, Brad’s voice getting steadily louder while Patrice’s feels more and more fragile. Finally, Brad appears between the trees. 

“Oh, fuck, thank god.” Brad sighs.

“I found you.” Patrice tries to smile but his lips feel stiff.

Brad hugs him, pulls him close and presses his face to Patrice’s neck. 

He jerks back. “Shit you’re freezing,” he takes Patrice’s hand. “Come on, we need to get back.”

“How? We’re lost.” Patrice gestures to the mess of trees around them.

“We just head north,” Brad says pulling his keys out and flipping through them until he gets to a small compass. “We either hit town or the 101, either one will work.”

It sounds simple. Patrice nods and lets Brad lead him through the wilderness.

\--

The snow falls slowly around them, and Brad walks north. The compass needle swings a little as he steps but always re-aligns north and red. Patrice follows a step behind and Brad tries not think about how blue his lips are turning. He’ll be okay, they’ll be okay. They just have to get home. Brad was so stupid to go back for the stick. He should have just left it and bought a new one. It’s not like he can’t afford it. Now they’re wandering in the woods and it’s all his fault. He knows not be out at the pond that late. The Winter Women come hunting at night. He knows better than most how dangerous it is, how easily they can trap you with their voices like wind through the bare trees and the huge endless black pools of their eyes. Pure dumb luck had saved him last time he’d seen one. It had been twenty years ago and a slip on the ice had broken her spell and allowed Brad the chance to run. Run he had, back to the city, back to light and the gas station with the cheery holiday music that drowned out her voice.

This time he would have been one of the summer corpses people stumble across if Patrice hadn’t come after him. He doesn’t really know how to say thanks for that. Brad’s never really been good with the express your feelings using words thing. He likes to think he’s a man of action, but if he’s totally honest he doesn’t always express his feelings with actions either. Sometimes he just buries them deep and pretends not to notice because on the other side of acknowledging those feelings is a whole big scary world of new feelings, bigger and deeper, and they’re kind of overwhelming enough when they’re just little feelings. 

Behind him Patrice stops walking. When Brad turns back to ask what’s wrong the words stick in his throat. Patrice looks worse than he had when Brad had found him--been found by him, whichever. His face looks drained of all color. 

“Just a little further,” he says encouragingly resting his hand on Patrice’s shoulder. Even through three layers of clothes and his gloves he can still feel the cold radiating off Patrice. 

Patrice slowly turns his head to look at Brad, “Where?”

Okay, that’s bad. Brad doesn’t really know what that means as far hypothermia or whatever but he knows it’s bad. 

“Home.” Brad takes Patrice’s hand, ignoring the part of him that wants to pull away from how cold it is, and holds up his compass again. It can’t be much farther. “Just follow me.”

Patrice follows obediently for a few steps before stopping again.

“Come on, we can’t stop.” Brad pulls on Patrice, but he doesn’t budge. He just stays where he is staring up at the dark sky. Brad pulls again, harder, but all he accomplishes is pulling Patrice of balance and now Patrice is lying motionless in the snow, still staring up at the sky. 

“Get up, GET UP!” He tries to pull Patrice up, tries to drag him forwards. It’s doesn’t matter how anymore, they just have to keep moving, they just have to get out of these stupid trees, but he can’t budge him, and he sinks down in the snow next to him. “What’s wrong with you!” Brad shouts, shoving uselessly at Patrice’s shoulders. “Why didn’t listen to me and stay with the car. You’d be safe. I told you to stay at the car.” It’s not really fair; if the situation was reversed Brad wouldn’t have thought twice about following Patrice to any end. He wishes the situation was reversed, it’d be nothing to die for Patrice but to live without him, when it’s Brad fault, when he’s the one stupid enough to get them into this. He can’t, he can’t. “Please, please get up. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, please I can’t-I need you. I-I love you, I just wanted to be with you all the time, I’m sorry.” He leans down, presses his forehead against Patrice’s icy one and tries to hold back the burn in his eyes. Crying is useless. Crying won’t help, it never helps, it’s just Brad doesn’t know what to do. All he can do is beg Patrice to magically get better and that, that is even more useless then crying. 

The tears leak out anyways, leaving burning hot trails of water down his face and dripping down onto Patrice’s cheeks. “Please, get up,” Brad whispers again.

The woods stay quiet around them, and it looks like the Winter Women get their victims after all, two for one, can’t beat that price. Brad takes a slow, careful breath, forces it past the knot of tears. He doesn’t give up, that’s his thing, he doesn’t give up on his dream, on the play, on anything. He isn’t giving up on Patrice. If he has to drag him through the snow all the way to New Glasgow then he fucking will.

“I think I hear a car,” Patrice says, voice raspy but clear.

“I told you, we were almost there.” Brad holds back the sob of relief. He sits up, drawing a shaky breath. “Come on,” he holds out his hand, “I’ll get us there.”

Patrice’s movements are slow, but he levers himself up and leans heavily on Brad as they start moving again. The sound of the cars gets louder and through the trees Brad can see light. 

They emerge from the trees at the pond where they started, now covered in a layer of snow. The car is waiting for them, and Brad turns the heat on high and carefully rubs the color back into Patrice’s fingers, watching the tips turn from white to pink. 

“I love you too, with you is the only place I ever want to be.” Patrice breaks the silence. 

The last bit of tension, of lingering terror, slips away from Brad at that. There’s a lot he could say, a lot he probably should say. He’s never been good at that using words thing though, he’s a man of action. “Let’s go home?”

“Yeah, let’s go home,” Patrice agrees. 


End file.
